[Vol. 1 pt. 26]
The next day, one thing led to another and I ended up going to the theater with my mom to see one of the recent releases. It wasn’t anything special, but it was always nice to get out and go see a movie on the big screen.
“Virtual reality is great and all since it lets me watch movies on the big screen from my bedroom, but it doesn’t beat actually going to the theater,” I said, holding the door open for my mom as she walked past and tossed our garbage into the trash. “Also, you forgot to toss some garbage out.”
“What? Where?” my mom asked in response. “Everything was in the bag, wasn’t it?”
I pointed at her.
She tried to look behind her only to realize a couple of seconds later what I was implying.
Naturally, and I fully deserved it, she smacked my arm.
“There you are again, abusing your wonderful, loving son without any flaw. Nothing I do will ever be enough for you. It’s enough to make me cry. Wah, wah,” I said with a forced sniffle, wiping away my “tears” with one hand as my other arm wrapped around her shoulders.
“You’re lucky that I don’t do worse than smack you,” she sighed.
“Like what? Take your legs off to beat me with them?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of poisoning your dinner. Or pushing you off a bridge. Lighting your room on fire while you’re busy playing games. That sort of stuff.”
“You uh… you might want to not sound so serious when you say things like that or else I’m going to start thinking that you might not be joking.”
“Oh, I’m not making it clear enough that I’m serious?”
“Mom, please don’t kill me. I was joking about your being garbage. You are a beautiful, smart, amazing woman and the best mother that I could ever ask for.”
“Uh-huh. Is that why you always tease me? I don’t want your love if it means having to suffer you.”
“I’m sorry, that’s just the sadist in me needing to be mean to those who I care about. Can I make it up to you? I promise to be nothing but loving and kind for the rest of the day.”
“Is that even possible for you?”
“You make me sound horrible! Of course it’s possible!”
“Fine, prove it. Go the rest of the day without teasing me at all.”
“Got it. I’ll make you proud, mom.”
I pulled her closer to my side as we reached the lobby where everybody was standing around for snacks and drinks, tickets, or to play various arcade games either before or after their movies.
It was the perfect place to prove to my mom just how wonderful of a son I was.
“Hey! Mom!” I said, though it was more of a shout. I talked as loudly as I could without actually shouting.
“Wh-why are you being so loud?” Mom asked, blushing a bit and looking at me with a confused expression.
“Have I ever mentioned how great of a mother you are?! You’re the best mom in the whole world! I love you so much, mom!”
“Da-Damian!” She reached up to try and shush me by placing her hands over my mouth, but I kept on moving my head away so that she wouldn’t succeed in silencing me. “Stop!”
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“Why?! I just want everybody to know how perfect you are and how much I love you! You’re the best mommy that I could ever ask for!”
Instead of trying to silence me, she wiggled out from underneath my arm and speed walked at top speed toward the exit.
“Why are you leaving?! I haven’t even begun my song about how great you are yet! Don’t you want to hear my song for you?!” I shouted, chasing after her.
Some of the younger kids in the lobby were laughing while pretty much everybody else either looked confused or annoyed. Or they cringed. Many of them cringed at me.
But that didn’t stop me.
One, I didn’t care about what they thought.
Two, as much of a jerk as I may have seemed, my mom burst out in laughter as soon as I caught up with her.
I never would have done anything that I knew would actually bother her. After all, if she wasn’t enjoying the teasing, it would have just been cruel. Teasing people was only fun and right when they wanted it and liked it.
My mom got to play the straight woman who threatened to kill me while I played the annoying, teasing child whose sole mission in life was to embarrass her and make her laugh.
That was just the kind of relationship we always had. Ever since my dad died, it had to be. Somebody had to make her and my sister laugh since there was nobody else to.
“You’re just like him,” Mom said. “He always wanted to embarrass us. Do you remember the time with the milkshakes?”
“How could I forget? I feel sick just thinking about it,” I answered.
“You told him you wanted a dozen milkshakes, so he ordered… a dozen milkshakes. Our table was covered in them. The waitress and her manager needed convinced that he was serious, and he explained to them in very precise details that he was serious about wanting to order a dozen milkshakes.”
“Yep. And then you made me drink as much as I could because you didn’t want it to go to waste. I ended up not even ordering any food. I had… what, four? Dad made it through seven, then Rae drank one.”
“Mhm. Both you and your father threw up after we got home.”
“The best part was you covering your face and turning more and more red as dad explained that he seriously wanted to order a dozen milkshakes. Getting to drink four milkshakes was pretty nice, too. And it taught me a lesson.”
“And that lesson was?”
“To not indulge in gluttony. I’d rather dedicate all of my sinning to lust.”
“Your father did both.”
“Yeah, but he was just that awesome. I could never be as good as him when it comes to sinning. I can only devote myself to one sin. He could handle two.”
“Three, if you think about it.”
“What’s the third?”
“Wrath.”
I would have spit my drink out if I had one. “That’s dark. Even for you, that’s dark. Is joking about that on the table now?”
“If you can joke about your uncle, I can joke about my husband.”
“Dark humor helps with coping, it’s true. Though, I don’t even think what he did would count as wrath. I mean, it was only one time. Plus even the judge implied that he agreed my uncle deserved it. And the local news was on dad’s side.”
“I always knew he had it in him. Have I ever told you about our time in school together?”
“Only little bits and pieces.”
“Well, if you would have seen how he defended every bullied kid around, you would agree that he was a rather devout follower of wrath as well. He just… focused his wrath on doing good. He never once raised a hand to anybody who didn’t deserve it, and the only people who he thought deserved it were horrible people.”
“Like pedophile rapists.”
“Everybody from school bullies to pedophile rapists.”
“I would say that nothing of value was lost, but dad lost his time because of it. I still don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about that. Literally everybody agreed that he wasn’t wrong to kill him, but he still got sentenced.”
“Well, the law is the law even if it is broken for a good reason,” Mom said before sighing. “Too bad he couldn’t direct his wrath at the cancer. If there was ever something for him to kill, it was that.”
The topic might have started with reminiscing over fond memories and dark humor, but I could tell by my mom’s expression that it was slipping into something more serious and depressing.
That was why I slowed down to get behind her, wrapped my arms around her neck, and said, “I want a piggyback ride. Carry me to the car.”
“Don’t – don’t you dare!” she shouted at me, swatting at my hands. “You’ll snap my spine if you try it!”
“Are you calling me fat?”
“Have you stepped on the scale lately? You’ve been letting yourself go ever since you started playing that game.”
“Alright. I’m definitely snapping your back now.”
I jumped up, causing her to scream at me, but I landed on my feet instead of forcing all of my weight onto her. I’m sure she knew that I wouldn’t actually make her give me a piggyback ride, but she still panicked.
Then I checked on my phone while Mom smacked me again.
“Looks like Rae is still running late. She says sorry. Apparently, her boyfriend got off at the wrong exit, again, and there was an accident, again,” I explained.
“Are you telling me that they somehow got off at the wrong exit two times and that there was an accident backing up traffic at each one?” Mom asked.
“Yep.”
“How?”
“I don’t know but it’s giving me even more of a reason to dislike this guy.”
“Be nice, Damian. You haven’t even met him yet.”
“He’s dating my sister. It’s my job to be anything other than nice to him.”
“What if he’s nice?”
“You can’t trust a man with luck this bad. It takes a special kind of horrible person to somehow mess up the directions, twice, in a self-driving car.”
“That sounds absurd but, at the same time, I understand exactly what you mean. It doesn’t really make any sense, does it?”
“Nope. It doesn’t. That’s why I think we should try to break them up.”
“I will seriously smack you if you scare another one of her boyfriends away. Why do you think she wouldn’t go to a local college? She didn’t want to have to live with you anymore.”
“I would feel wounded by your words if I regretted any of my actions. The last guy was an asshole anyways.”
“All he did was unscrew the saltshaker before handing it to you.”
“Exactly! Sure, he might have thought it was just some funny prank, and Rae might have given him permission to do it, but that’s not a good prank! You’re not supposed to prank people in ways that the prankee wouldn’t also enjoy! If it’s not done in good fun then what’s the point? It’s just cruel at that point. Also, he ruined the dinner you made for us. Well, he ruined my bowl of it. How am I supposed to ever like a man who ruins food my mom made for me?”
“Shouldn’t you be just as upset with Rae for telling him it was a good idea?”
“Rae has always been like that, plus she’s my sister, so it’s okay. Siblings are supposed to be assholes to each other.”
“I see. So, how long are we going to stand outside of the car talking like this?”
We reached my car some time ago while we were talking. “The weather’s nice plus Rae isn’t at the restaurant yet. Unless you give me an idea for something else to do, we’re either going to stand outside of the car or wait inside of it. Standing is better since it gives your legs some exercise.”
“That’s a good point. Maybe my metal will bulge with muscles if I stand on them for long enough.”
“Muscular, metal thighs. Now, that’s something I haven’t really thought about before.”
“You’re going to get weird with this, aren’t you?”
“I am. The first idea that comes to mind is some sort of robotic android girl with really thick thighs who—”
My phone buzzed.
When I checked to see who it was, it was none other than the little sister herself.
And, apparently, she was at the restaurant.
It was then that I realized I misread the timestamps and that her message before the last one, which read “see you soon,” was actually sent about thirty minutes prior – from before the movie was over.
The whole point of going to the movie theater in the first place was to pass the time after Mom and I had already gotten ready and were waiting at the restaurant for Rachel. Then I got the text from her telling me that they got off at the wrong exit and that there was an accident. They estimated it would be a couple of hours because of how extreme the accident was, so Mom and I went to see a movie.
Then I came out and read the text about it happening again, so I figured we’d have another movie’s worth of time before Rachel was at the restaurant.
Apparently not.
“Oh, they’re there,” I said.
“Damian! Now we’re going to be the ones who are late! You know how much I hate making others wait!” Mom whined at me.
“Hey, it’s not my fault. They’re the ones who messed up and were running late in the first place.”
“That doesn’t - ugh, one more thing I just remembered.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t steal him from her either.”
“That was one time and I didn’t even mean for that to happen. Do you think I didn’t feel horrible stealing my little sister’s girlfriend from her? Besides, she implied she was single when I first met her.”
“God, that was so awkward… but I couldn’t stop laughing.”
“Yeah, yeah. You looked like you were about to collapse on the floor from laughing as soon as you realized that the girl I was hooking up with was Rae’s new girlfriend. And you call me a jerk.”
“It was too perfect. If there’s a god, he set that up as some sort of divine comedy.”
“So then God is a sadist? Or maybe just dominant. If I ever find myself praying, I’ll make sure to address him as the holy Daddy.”
We climbed into the car and input the destination for it to take us there on its own. “You’re going to Hell if you keep that up.”
“Hell is where all the cool kids are. Besides, you and dad will be there with me. Rae will probably join us, too.”
“Oh! You just reminded me of something.”
“Shoot, mombot.”
“The next time you go protesting, since I know you love to hold up those silly signs, I thought of something you could put on it.”
“Well, don’t just keep me in suspense.”
“Alright, what I thought of is a sign that says ‘No gods no masters in the streets’ on top and ‘Oh god yes master in the sheets.’ Pretty good, right?”
“You saw that online, didn’t you?”
“Drat. Did you see it before?”
“Yeah, you thief. Did you just try taking credit for that?”
“I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids.”
“You’re killing me with that old of a reference. I want a newer model of mombot who comes with better jokes and fresher references.”
“Ok, boomer.”
“Please. Boomers aren’t even alive anymore.”
“But that was one of my favorite memes from my youth.”
“Ok, zoomer.”
“Don’t hate just because I’m from the best generation.”
“Don’t make me order a dozen milkshakes.”
“Please don’t.”
A devilish grin spread across my lips as I got a perfect idea.
I knew exactly how to tell if Rachel’s new boyfriend was worthy of respect or not.
A milkshake drinking competition.